As a Man Grows Older
About this ebook
Marked by deep humanity and earthy humor, by psychological insight and an elegant simplicity of style, As a Man Grows Older (Senilità, in Italian; the English title was the suggestion of Svevo’s great friend and admirer, James Joyce) is a brilliant study of hopeless love and hapless indecision. It is a masterwork of Italian literature, here beautifully rendered into English in Beryl de Zoete’s classic translation.-Print ed.
“The poem of our complex modern madness.”—EUGENIO MONTALE
“Svevo has the capacity—so rare as to be almost unknown in the English novel—of handling emotional relationships with a combined tenderness, humour and realism.”—THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
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About the author
Italo Svevo was an Italian writer and businessman, known as a novelist, playwright, and short story writer. Born as Aron Ettore Schmitz in Trieste in 1861 to a German-Jewish family, Italo Svevo (literally Italian Swabian) wrote the classic, self-published 1923 novel La Coscienza di Zeno (Confessions of Zeno, or Zeno’s Conscience), which might have vanished into obscurity were it not for famous author James Joyce, whom Schmitz met in 1907 when Joyce tutored him in English while working for Berlitz in Trieste.
Joyce, who had read Schmitz’ earlier novel Senilità (As Man Grows Older), which had also been largely ignored when published in 1898, championed Confessions of Zeno, assisting in having it translated into French and published in Paris, where it received extraordinary critique.
